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If you're anything like me, you love knowing where your food came from. For my family this means growing whatever fruits and vegetables that I can, raising chickens for eggs and meat, raising hogs for BACON! (okay okay, we eat the rest of the pig too.) and buying local for whatever we can't produce ourselves. Don't get me wrong, we also go to the grocery store, especially for things we can't grow or make, like toilet paper, coffee, and rice. And when I'm tired or too busy to cook, we've been known to devour some handy store-bought perogies. But overall our goal is to be as self sufficient as possible. This has the added bonus of reducing our carbon footprint and taking some strain off the planet.
A skill that I've been practicing is rendering my own lard from the hogs that we raise. Lard gets a bad rap, but I feel that by processing my own I can avoid a lot of the downfalls that factory processed lard presents, and, contrary to popular belief, lard has lots of healthy attributes. Butter is around sixty percent saturated fat, coconut oil is ninety percent, and lard beats them both at forty percent. Additionally, lard is higher in monounsaturated fats (forty five percent) which are considered heart-healthy. As an added bonus, lard packs a punch of vitamin D, which is a feature specific to animal fats. Keep in mind here that I'm not suggesting that you throw your olive oil in the trash, it's still one of the healthiest fats on the market, but I want you to consider that maybe lard isn't the devil that mainstream media makes it out to be. (DISCLAIMER - I'm not talking about store bought lard here, as far as I'm concerned that stuff is poison. It's hydrogenated in the factory to make it shelf stable, which causes it to have otherwise nonexistent cholesterol and trans fat. Home rendered lard doesn't suffer these nasty side effects.)
I use lard in so many things, but if I don't ask for it at butchering time the fat from my pigs is just another waste product. We try our best not to waste anything, so we request the return of ears, tail, organs, fat, feet and hocks, and we use them for dog food and treats, soup, and of course lard. Even if you don't raise your own pigs I would suggest talking to your local butcher. They often have surplus lard that they can sell to you fairly cheap, and it's 100% tastier and healthier than anything you could buy at the .
Lard is useful in most aspects of cooking. I use if for pan frying, deep frying in place of butter in my bread recipes, and even in savoury pie crusts. You just have to be careful using it in sweet things because sometimes it throws off the flavour, but if you're not sure whether lard is the right choice for your recipe, give it a try! At worst you'll have a slightly less sweet product than with butter, and at best you'll have discovered a new use for your home-rendered lard!!!
I know a lot of people avoid rendering their own lard because it's a lot of work, and I'm not going to lie and tell you that it's not, but I've found some handy tricks that make the job a little easier.
Make sure that you have a WHOLE DAY available for this chore because the fat has to simmer on low heat for a looooong time, but once you get your fat ground up there really isn't that much work involved aside from stirring.
Now the grinding is one of the tricks for lessening your work load. The first time I rendered my own lard I didn't have a meat grinder and it was agony! You want your lard to be in as tiny of pieces as is possible, so I spent several hours cutting 10 square feet of solid fat into pieces the size of peas. If you don't have a meat grinder or you love manual labour, this technique is still effective, but picking up an inexpensive meat grinder will cut your time in half.
This is the grinder that I use.
The second trick that I've found handy is working in smaller batches. I still process all of my lard in the same day, but instead of piling it all in one giant stock pot, I divide it into several smaller pots and work over multiple burners. This seems to cut down on cooking time because instead of having one pot with six inches of lard in it, you can have four little pots with 2 inches in each and the lard has more surface area and a better opportunity to heat through.
The third trick is to assemble all of your equipment the day before. It sounds silly, but it's annoying to have to put everything on hold on rendering day just so you can run to the store and pick up more cheesecloth.
Alright then! Everyone ready?
Step one (which I try to do the day before), is assembling the equipment. The things that you're going to need are,
SHARP knives. Trust me.
At least one BIG spoon. It doesn't have to be as big as mine, but the further your hand is from the simmering fat, the happier you'll be.
A cutting board. Again, the bigger the better. If you're working with leaf lard instead of side fat you shouldn't need as much room.
The grinder! As I said above this is technically optional, but you'll do yourself a favour by using one.
A bowl for the fat as you grind it. If you have a bigger grinder or a smaller pot you can omit this, but my pot doesn't fit under the mouth of my little mill.
A pot. Or two or three or four pots, depending on which simmering technique you use.
Straining supplies. I'm a stickler for clear fat, so I filter once through a strainer into a large measuring cup. (This also makes it easier to pour into the jars.) and then a second time through about ten layers of cheesecloth into the jar that I'll be storing it in.
Large measuring cup.
Strainer.
Cheesecloth.
Jars! You'll want to have more jars than you think you'll need, and you'll want them to be very, very clean. I feel like it would be a waste to spend a whole day rendering lard only to pour it into dirty jars.
Lids. You can use metal canning lids and rings, but I find the plastic twist-ons to be much more convenient, and you can pick them up for a pittance in the canning section, or on Amazon -
Now you're ready to go to work.
I want to stress again that you should start this job in the morning. Otherwise you'll be straining your fat at two am the next day and you'll forget to take pictures for your blog. (Hypothetically of course, I would never do something like that!)
The first step is mincing the fat. My grinder is finicky, so I have to cut the lard into chunks before running it through, but this is still about a tenth of the cutting that I would have to do otherwise. I always wait until all of my lard is ground up before putting it over the heat, because I don't want some of it to be finished before the rest, but that's really a matter of personal preference, you can start heating whenever you want.
Add a cup of water to your pot! It will evaporate out during cooking, but it helps to prevent the ground lard from sticking on the bottom.
When you stick your pot(s) of lard on the stove, you want to have your heat set at the absolute lowest temperature. It is incredibly easy to scorch the fat on the bottom and this will give your finished product a burned taste. I actually have to offset my pots at the beginning of the cooking process so that only one half is on the burner, and I keep turning the pot so that it heats evenly.
STIR CONSTANTLY
Once your fat has begun to melt you can pay less attention to it, but at the outset you should baby it a little. You'll kick yourself if your burn the lard that you spent all morning cutting up.
Monitor, monitor, monitor.
Much like children, the second you forget about the lard on the stove, it's going to misbehave. You don't have to stare at it constantly, but give it a check every twenty minutes or so to make sure it's not burning.
Keep an eye on the cracklings. That's the name for the bits of meat attached to the lard that separate during rendering, float to the bottom, and become crispy. You want to make sure that all of the lard has melted, but you also don't want the cracklings to get to dark. When you can see through clear lard to little light brown chunks of meat at the bottom of the pot it's time to take it off the heat.
Next you're going to secure your strainer over your measuring cup. This is significantly easier with a helper, but not impossible on your own. Ensure that when you begin to pour your strainer won't go flying across the room. After I pour my fat through the strainer I dump the cracklings back into the pot to deal with later. If your measuring cup is full before your pot is empty, move onto the next step and come back to the pot after.
Now take your measuring cup full of mostly clean fat, and pour it SLOWLY through the cheesecloth into your jars. You can use any size jar, I use quarts. I also use an elastic band around the cheesecloth to hold it in place.
After your pot is empty and your jars are filled, wipe down the outside and rims of your jars, cap them, and stick them in the fridge. I don't actually 'can' mine, as I don't put it through the canning process, but I've used the same lard for several years without it turning rancid. I just keep it in the fridge and use it until it's gone.
After the processing is complete, many people will use the leftover cracklings in recipes, but I can't get my family to eat them, so I simply mix them with some grain and give them to the chickens for a special treat.
Congratulations! You've made enough lard for months to come.
